Face-Off Yearbook Goes Digital for 2014

Have you ever been sitting at a game wishing you had your Face-Off Yearbook to find out more about the players you’re watching? Do you regularly watch college games on TV with your smartphone or tablet to complement the broadcasts? Do you wish your Face-Off could have the most up-to-date schedules?

Do you want to save the Earth?

If any of those are true — and even if they’re not — we have great news about the 2014 Face-Off Yearbook.
For the first time, this institution that’s been around since 1994 will be available digitally for smartphones and tablets via iTunes, Google Play and the Amazon Appstore — just like Inside Lacrosse Magazine.

We’ve talked for years about how great it would be to make Face-Off a digital product to increase its access, accuracy and — thus — value. Putting the yearbook on smartphones and tablets makes it automatically available anywhere you go. Whether you’re watching lacrosse on TV at a friend’s house, attending in person or out at a bar or youth event with fellow fans, it will always be in your pocket with the most comprehensive statistics, rosters, schedules and previews for the season.

Another big benefit will be our ability to update the publication, and offer digital archives from past issues. We typically transmit Face-Off in early November. Not much usually happens before it goes on sale in December, but by the time the season starts, there are always changes to schedules and rosters. Our digital platform provides the opportunity to push updates so the content is fresh as we receive news in the preseason.

Face-Off will still contain all the in-depth previews, preseason All-Americans and all-league picks, statistics, data and predictions you need. It will still cover men’s Division I, II, III, junior college, women’s DI and the MCLA. It will still be lacrosse’s most comprehensive season preview. The only thing it won’t be is in print.

This shift comes on the heels of an incredibly successful digital launch of Inside Lacrosse Magazine, so we couldn’t be more excited for Face-Off to further our foray into this exciting new space. (Inside Lacrosse Magazine is available in both print and digital form, but the 2014 Face-Off Yearbook will be a digital-only product.)

This comes after 20 years of success for Face-Off, the first seven of which were with founder and editor-at-large Bob Vlahakis, whose incredible hard work and dedication is why lacrosse has a first-class annual yearbook. Bob and his entire family (especially wife Sue and sons Jimmy and Pete, who grew into successful DI players and are still involved with the game) put it together every fall without even the luxury of email in the early days. They at one point had to rely on the fax machine at a 7-Eleven down the street to get information back from coaches.

It’s pretty amazing that we’re talking about this labor-of-love project that was once mostly hand-written now being conveniently available on two products (tablets and smartphones) that weren’t even close to existing when Face-Off started. That’s a credit to what the legendary Bob Vee (who has since had tremendous success coaching girls’ high school and college lacrosse) built from the ground up.

It’s also a sign of the sport’s growth to have this in your iTunes, Google Play and Amazon Appstore streams, next to all your other media and app purchases. Any time we can expose the sport to new people in mainstream media — whether that’s on “Saturday Night Live,” Hyundai commercials or your iPhone — that helps lacrosse grow.

Six archived issues are available now, for $3.99 each (2008-2013), and today we launched a special presale for the 2014 edition at the discounted rate of $4.99. That’s nearly 40% off the 2014 edition cover price of $7.99. In an effort to make the 2014 digital yearbook more attractive and accessible to as many people as possible, this year’s $7.99 cover price is down 20% from last year’s $9.95 price.

So be sure to download the app, and get your presale copy today. Practices start right after the New Year, and official 2014 games are less than 90 days away.

A version of this column ran in the December issue of Inside Lacrosse Magazine, available digitally now and in print form later this week.